TESTIMONIALS 2012
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 Hello Thi:
Just a note to tell you we had a wonderful time on all the tours. The guides were great and made the tours very interesting. Hope all is well with you and business is booming.
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Keep up the good work. I miss you and feel like we are family. So if you ever have time email me and let me know how you are doing.
Thanks and Love
---*** Janice G Moore - USA - DEC 2012 ***---
Dear Thi,
A zillion thank yous for your wonderful excursions (Celebrity Millenium on December 15 and 16 with Hilary Bafour in Saigon and December 19 and 20 with Fern Snir in Hanoi)!! We adored Vietnam, it's a beautiful and very friendly country with a great history, and we will be back for a land trip in the next couple of years.
We very much enjoyed our 2 days with you and also with our Hanoi guide, Mr. Giang.
Thank you again.
---*** SHEILA CASTONGUAY – CANADIAN - DEC 2012 ***---
Good afternoon,
I am just writing to THANK YOU so much for the wonderful tour that we had. We really enjoyed it. Binh was such a wonderful tour guide, he had so much knowledge.
Thanks again and we hopefully will do another tour with your Company in the New Year.
Kind regards,
Ralph & Cheryle Daines – AUSTRALIAN – NOV 2012
Dear Thi
I would like to thank you once again for the marvellous tour that we and the other 62 people took with your company today.
The level of interest and knowledge of the country was astounding and it made the 2 hour journey into HCMC fly past.
I very much appreciated the actions over and above those expected which you took for us and I will be pleased to recommend your company to everyone I meet with an interest in Vietnam
YVONNE AND COLIN – AUSTRALIAN - NOV 2012
Dear Thi
I’m ashamed that it’s taken me so long to write and thank you for an absolutely wonderful holiday in your beautiful country. We enjoyed every minute of our trip and are very grateful for your efficiency and the thoughtful way you organised everything to suit us.
We loved meeting you and thank you for ‘shouting’ us the delicious meal. That relaxed walk we had with you from our hotel to the restaurant gave us confidence to want to explore Ho Chi Min City on our own, and we hope that it was not a problem telling Thun that we were going to forego the last day of his tour and have it to ourselves. As it turned out, that Friday was very wet, but we just loved wondering and watching the way the people of Ho Chi Min City go about their business. We were grateful for each of the guides, Dom, Trang and Thun who were all so knowledgeable and helped us enjoy and understand things so much more. Dom especially had the ability to be relaxed and informative, showing us things that were not necessarily part of ‘the tour’, which we really loved.
The Ha Long Bay trip was a highlight and we’d recommend the Emotion Boat to anybody. The tailor, ‘Blue’ that Thun suggested made us about 7 different items and we were satisfied with all of them. I also had a couple of things made at ‘Yali’ where they offered a little better conditions such as dressing rooms and had more fabrics to choose from. Their prices seemed to be fairly similar to Blue.
I have already recommended your company to some people, one being a group who hope to travel next year. I’ve given them all your details.
Thank you again for a fabulous holiday.
Warmest regards
MARG AND PAT CAIRNEY – AUSTRALIAN – OCT 2012
Hi Thi,
Thanks for your email. We all thoroughly enjoyed our time in Cambodia. Thank you so much for organizing everything. You did a brilliant job. We loved our hotel in Siem Reap especially, very friendly staff and close to everything.
We did make a couple of changes to our itinerary. We ended up going to the Apsara Dance & Dinner a night earlier as we couldn't get in on the original day- but this was probably a good thing as we had time to relax and change our clothes since we had the free afternoon anyway. The evening was thoroughly enjoyable! We all enjoyed Angkor Wat, Bayon Temple and Ta Prohm. Our guide, Mooni was very helpful and flexible with our itinerary, so it was no problem to change the Roulos temple group for going to the Silk farm, which was quite interesting. We also visited the floating village on the morning of our free day which meant we had Saturday morning free before we drove down to Phnom Penh, this worked out well. We went to Bantreay Srei on the way back from Kulen Mountain (instead of the day listed in the itinerary), we also stopped at the butterfly conservatory on the way back. I enjoyed Kulen Moutain, very beautiful and understated. Apparently, it is no longer possible to get to the elephant pool as the road is impassable. (just thought you should know, not important to us). All in all, we feel we spent the right amount of time doing organized tours with free time. With our free time we went quad bike riding, horseback riding, markets, walking around the local streets (including Pub St) and lounging in the hotel bars or pool. We are glad that we had the opportunity to visit the Killing Fields and S21, it is important that we see these things. However, we are glad we spent most of our week around Siem Reap.
Perhaps, if we had been able to spend more time in Cambodia I would have enjoyed visiting other Provinces and ecotourism tours but given the ages and stages of our family and the amount of time we had, we had just the right mix of activities.
We had an amazing time in Cambodia. Thanks so very much for everything, Thi
Next time, we'd love to visit Vietnam!
Thanks again, Thi.
JAN HORTON – AUSTRALIAN – JULY 2012
Dear Thi,
Finally we sent you the promised e-mail about our holiday this summer in Vietnam.
Our global remark is that our vacation was splendid and it fully matched our hopes and expectation.
Our compliments for your company! We have already proposed friends to contact you if they would visit Vietnam.
Vietnam is a beautiful country with very nice people!
We would like to give you some more detailed feedback in general and specific.
In general:
- Guides and drivers were always on-time on the location we agreed.
- Guides spoke well English which made talking to them easy.
- Hotels were good in relation to our expectation (see detailed remark for 1 exception).
- The mini-vans that were used to transport us were comfortable.
- Good balance between excursions and leisure time.
Hanoi
- We liked the city very much. Our stay was very nice. We enjoyed every minute of it.
- The lake and the small city center give a very relaxed atmosphere although it is a very busy city.
Halong Bay
- A long drive to and from Halong Bay but very worthwhile.
- The rooms in the boat were small (off course), clean and comfortable.
- The meals on the boat were big (too much for us) and the different courses were served quickly one after the other.
- The view was great! The nature, the water, the other boats, the cave the swimming in the evening, were super.
Sapa
- The night train was an experience. We were in the last coupé of the last wagon on the way to Sapa and it was very shaky.
- We arrived early morning with rain. However when we came to the hotel it was nice weather and we had a great view.
- The difference in life and culture here compared to Hanoi was obvious and it was a good suggestion of you to visit Sapa!
Transfer Sapa – Hanoi
- After we arrived in Hanoi with the night train from Sapa could spent some time in the hotel.
- In fact there were no rooms available and we spent 4 hours in the lobby, since also our flight was delayed to a later time.
We could freshen up in a bathroom under the staircase in the lobby, but our suitcases were in the lobby for everyone to see.
- This transfer would be open for improvement. We would be willing to accept an additional charge to spent some time in 1 hotel room.
Hoi An
- The hotel was exactly what we hoped for: nice rooms with a swimming pool.
- The city is nice and calm and we enjoyed relaxing time, the beach and the restaurants.
- We had 1 restaurant that did not meet up to our expectation, but all other were very nice.
- We had some clothes made which is a good memory.
HCMC
- Upon arrival we went to Cu chi tunnels: not a nice story; we learned a lot on how people lived in those days.
- The dinner with your colleague was very nice. We did not recognise all the delicious food on the menu.
- Your colleague ordered some different dishes and we had a lovely meal.
- We tried to go back to the restaurant later without reservation but there was a queue waiting for a place so we went elsewhere.
- HCMC is very different from Hanoi and this was interesting to see.
Mekong delta
- We very much enjoyed the boat trip with the view of every day Mekong life.
- We had rain during the boat trip which was a positive dimension.
- The excursions during the boat trip gave us a good view of all sorts of factories & family live.
- We will not easily forget the fish we had in the restaurant for lunch: fresh and delicious.
Kind regards
BÉATRICE ROY AND GEERT NIEUWENHUIS – Nederland - JULY 2012
Good morning Thi,
We just wanted to say thank you so much for dinner last night. It truly was fantastic. I meant it when I said it was one of the best meals I have ever had! Also thank you for my first ever motor bike ride. I never would have imagined that the first time I would be on a proper motor bike would be in HCMC traffic. Thank you also for the wonderful work you have done in helping us plan our itinerary, your advice has been so helpful and we have appreciated it very much.
Thank you again for making our stay in Vietnam so special, and I really hope we will have the opportunity to return the favour in Australia. Snorkelling awaits you!
Kindest regards,
Kathy and Peter – AUSTRALIAN - APR 2012
Thi,
Now that we are home and settled, I wanted to let you know what a great time we had thanks to Smile Tours. Aaron and I were extremely pleased with how on time all of the drivers and guides were. We were especially happy with how accommodating both Phieng and Neer were. Both guides showed genuine interest in our safety and our enjoyment of our trip. Their perfect English made our trip extra enjoyable. Special thanks to you and your team for putting together our itinerary. We were thrilled with the amount of Vietnam we were able to see in such a short time because of your organization. The drivers were also wonderful and always managed to waiting for us right up front ahead of all of the other cars. We really enjoyed all of the restaurants that we were brought to. We are also very happy you convinced us to go to Cai Rang. We really enjoyed Can Tho and are glad that we got to experience that part of the country. We also had fun our last evening in district 3 of HCMC. Since we had time before meeting the driver for the airport transfer, we decided to walk around and came across a movie theatre in an multi level shopping center. We saw an American movie and did some shopping. That was a lot of fun. We already miss Vietnam, its people, the food and the culture. We will recommend Smile Tours to everyone. Thank you so much for everything.
Kind Regards,
KRISTIN BENNETT & AARON MARCHESE – USA – FEB 2012
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